Creative Pyrotechnics in Paris

Thus far, my blog has 2 earlier posts about the antics of the radical political performance artist Pyotr Pavlensky, with enticing titles Flaming Testicles and Tastefully Nailed Testicles, both named in reference to Pavlensky’s favorite creative media — his own scrotum. That’s right, Pavlensky gained notoriety for anti-Kremlin stunts including nailing his scrotum to the Red Square cobblestones, as well as slicing off part of his ear and sewing his mouth shut. This isn’t for nothing he is known internationally as the “Russian scrotum artist.”

Pavlensky spent 18 months in pretrial detention after he doused a large wooden door at the FSB headquarters on Moscow’s Lubyanka Square with gasoline and set it on fire in November 2015. He was released in June 2016 and ordered to pay a hefty fine, which he refused to do.

Soon thereafter, in May 2016, France granted Pavlensky and his partner Oksana Shalygina political asylum.The couple claimed they fled Russia with their two daughters to escape a false sexual assault case against them. Pavlensky and Shalygina, who both advocate for open relationships, dismissed the allegations, claiming that their relationship with an alleged victim was consensual. However, a Moscow actress had accused them of raping her. They maintain that she filed her complaint under the orders of the Russian security services. If found guilty, the couple could be jailed for up to 10 years. Whatever.

Paris welcomed them with open arms, while Russians, particularly law and order authorities, breathed sigh of relieve — brazen provocateurs became a tremendous pain in their collective hinds.

Early Monday morning, Pavlensky, so-called “mind, balls and conscience” of Putin’s Russia, was arrested in Paris after setting fire to the doors of the Bank of France.In a statement made to Divergence Images Pavlensky explained that “bankers have taken the place of the monarchs” and called for a great French revolution. The ‘performance’ caused the bank to shut down on Monday, according to a note attached to the door. “Igniting the Bank of France shows the truth the authorities forced us to forget. The Bastille was destroyed by rebels as a symbol of despotism and power. There, they built another hotbed of slavery, which betrays the revolutionists and sponsors a bandit Versailles. The Bank of France took over the Bastille, bankers became monarchs,”  Pavlensky reportedly said in a statement, posted by Femen.
 

Flaming Testicles

“Actionist” Pyotr Pavlensky

On November 10, 2013 on Red Square in Moscow Pavlensky nailed his scrotum to the stone pavement. God only knows how he did it, that is if he really managed to drive а nail into the cobblestone. Unbeknownst are the ways of a true artist…

I’ve written about Mr. Pavensky’s this and other exploits in the field of actionism with plenty of pictures in my post Tastefully Nailed Testicles.

Since then, more actions followed, because true actionist must act and shock.

In February 2014, near the Church of the Saviour on Spilled Blood in St. Petersburg, Pavlensky, along with other actionists, “staged” the Ukrainian Maidan. The “artists” brought fifty or so tires, gasoline, metal sheets, sticks and two flags — black anarchist and yellow-blue Ukrainian. The tires were stacked into a barricade and then set on fire. The metal sheets, struck by sticks, created a characteristic Kiev street fighting rhythm. The ruckus continued even while the firefighters tried extinguish the fire.
Mr. Pavlensky was detained by police. No serious repercussions followed, however. The district court of Saint Petersburg dropped all charges against him soon thereafter apparently for lack of evidence.

On October 19, 2014, Pavlensky staged yet another artistic stint, sitting naked on the roof of the State Research Center for Social and Forensic Psychiatry in Moscow, large knife in hand. He tried and apparently succeeded to cut off his earlobe (or hacked a chunk of it) with a knife in protest against the use of psychiatry for political purposes.

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“The knife separates the earlobe from the body… A concrete wall of Psychiatry separates the Society of Reasonable People from crazies. By using psychiatry for political purposes yet again, the police apparatus tries to regain the power of drawing the threshold between reason and madness. Armed with psychiatric diagnoses, the bureaucrat in a white coat carves out of society those pieces that prevent him from establishing a monolithic dictate, a one for all and compulsory for everybody,” Pavlensky said in a statement to the media.

Or something to this effect. He is a remarkably eloquent fellow. I translated his verbiage as close to the original as I knew how.

Mr. Pavlensky underwent psychiatric evaluation and, four days later, was once again found sane, thus not a subject to psychiatric intervention. It seems that these days Russian psychiatrists are terribly afraid of being accused of — yes, you guessed it — using psychiatry for political purposes. It’s much easier to declare citizen Pavlensky perfectly sane, rather than stand their ground and keep him from — if nothing else — harming himself, one anatomical part after another. Besides, the patient was doing it for the sake of sacred art.

Only a few days ago, aching for action actionist shocked and awed again. At 2 am, alone and fully dressed for a change, he splashed a canister of gasoline under a certain door on Lubyanka Square in Moscow and lit it with a lighter, setting it aflame. Mind you, it wasn’t just any door he choose at rendom, but the door of the Federal Security Service of the Russian Federation (FSB) — the Russian CIA, that is. 

The door burned much to the delight of numerous journalists, duly filming the door alight and the artist’s silhouette against the blazing fire. Because, you see, unless the “performance” is photographed, filmed and broadcast, the actionism is meaningless (aside for the damage to the artist and the property, if any.)

Of course, Pavlensky was detained by police, unless it was FSB. The question remains: Is Pavlensky going to be punished or get off scot-free this time around as well? Honestly, given Pavlensky’s prior brushes with the law and his luck in avoiding prosecution, I don’t know.

Now, lets imagine for a moment that some actionist would have attempted a protest action and approached the doors of CIA headquarters with the similar “artistic” intent. What do you think might have happened? Would the artistic expression of this sort have been duly appreciated by the CIA? FBI? Police?

Tastefully Nailed Testicles

A Russian performance artist  Pyotr Pavlensky stripped naked and nailed his testicles to a Red Square cobblestones in protest against the Kremlin’s crackdown on political rights. Ouch!
Pyotr Pavlensky works in the genre of “actionism”. Out of the thee scantly worded meanings of this word in the Wikipedia, only one, however imprecisely, applies to Pyotr Pavlensky’s “actionism”:  an excessive emphasis on social action, activity, or change in lieu of continuity, stability, and permanence.

Pyotr Pavlensky sitting naked outside Lenin’s Mausoleum

Mr. Pavlensky’s  latest “act” not only greatly annoyed local police but stirred emotions, discussions and called for opinions. In a word, it resonated. How did it resonate is another matter. Mildly put, it wasn’t the sort of resonance  Pavlensky might’ve hoped for. Unless, of course, his intent was simply to gain notoriety by means of exhibitionism, however painful.

“The action must be seen as a metaphor of apathy, political indifference and fatalism of the contemporary Russian society. It is not as much a bureaucratic mess that deprives our society of the ability to act as a fixation [of our society] on its defeats and failures that nails us to the Kremlin’s cobblestone, creating an army of apathetic fools, resigned to meet their fate… “ the artist explained his artistic aspirations in a statement.

I‘ll withhold my own opinion for a moment here, in favor of “fair and balanced reporting” of the Russian folks’ reaction to the Pavlensky’s persona and his latest endeavor.

Based upon comments and discussions, vociferous majority wasn’t overly amused. That is not to say that majority of Russians disagree with Mr. Pavlensky’s  statement. Unfortunately, people seem to have paid little attention to his words, transfixed mostly on his mangled balls.

“Apathetic fools”, as Pavlensky’s calls his non-fans, discussed subjects that interested them a lot more than defeats and failures that nails us to the Kremlin’s cobblestone. Was he drunk, very drunk or blitzed out of his mind? Wasn’t he ashamed as women and children watched? How cold were the cobblestones against his skinny hind? How painful was it to drive a nail through the skin — painful, very painful or bearable? How many times he missed the nail and smashed his balls?

Idiot, psycho, fool, crazy, masochist  were the most common epithets used to describe Mr. Pavlensky, and this is excluding a number of more emotionally charged expressions, which are unsuitable for printing on this page.

Mr. Pavlensky  is a prolific “actionist”.

Pyotr Pavlensky sewn his lips together to demonstrate against the jailing of two female members of the Pussy Riot punk band who staged an anti-Kremlin performance inside Moscow’s main cathedral in 2011.

Pyotr Pavlensky was arrested after wrapping his naked body in barbed wire outside a Saint Petersburg government building in May.

Pavlensky’s  outre acts, if not gained him millions of fans, had certain impact in Russia nonetheless. “Actionism” as a movement of contemporary art got into a limelight. 

During one Russian radio-show another “actionist” shared his idea for the next “action”: As a sign of social protest and rebellion, he planned to bring “lots of chairs” — perhaps a thousand of them — and pile’em up under the doors and in the area in-front of certain government building. Whatever for? “To see how they will rake through the whole bunch of chairs”, trying to clear the place. The artist was asked several pointed questions about the higher purpose of such “action”. Wouldn’t it look ever so slightly “idiotic”? Offended, the “actionist”  retorted that criticism of his ideas means ignorance and that those who criticize him do not understand art. Well, at least the “chair pileup” act was pain free, unlike Mr. Pavlensky’s martyrdom. 

A fair number of commentators and “opinionators” collectively recalled this “artsy” joke:  If you shit under someone’s door and then ring the doorbell, it’s no longer a disorderly conduct, but an INSTALLATION. If, on the  other hand, you press the doorbell knob first  and then drop your pants and shit, its a PERFORMANCE.

As I said, neither of the above is my opinion, merely a Vox Populi…